Wildland firefighting often involves the creation of a fireline (a break in vegetative fuels), an operation commonly hindered by the break-down of gas-powered chainsaws. Some firefighters may not possess the knowledge and skills needed to address break-downs quickly, which threatens productivity and safety. The Applied Cognitive Task Analysis method was used to examine the troubleshooting process of an expert wildland fire sawyer. This included elicitations of key steps in this process, specific pieces of valuable knowledge, and sources of expertise. These results show that much of the expert understanding of complex faults was developed on-the-job rather than during a formal training program. This study highlights areas where training and job aids may be improved to support wildland firefighters in chainsaw troubleshooting and provides preliminary support of ACTA as a tool for training specialists in this domain.
The term complacency is often referenced in many risk and safety domains, despite a unifying definition for the term currently backed by the field of psychology. Complacency has been listed as a cause for accidents in the domain of wildland firefighting. Moreover, fires resulting in fatalities or near-fatalities share a common factor of occurring on small fires or deceptively quiet areas of larger fires. This fact suggests complacency may be a key factor in circumstances that lead to the deaths of firefighters. This study analyzes the application of complacency in wildland firefighting tree-felling accident reports to develop a guiding framework informed by complexity thinking for determining a theory of complacency within the domain. Using a text mining method for accident report analysis, we aim to develop a framework for understanding complacency in this domain. A framework of complacency can help to inform firefighting risk management strategies and potentially save lives.
In temporally-constrained reaching tasks, participants make rapid movements to a target while making their movements last a designated length of time. It has been well-established that effective target width, a measure of spatial accuracy, increases linearly with movement speed. This study sought to understand how individual differences in temporal sensitivity affect this speed-accuracy tradeoff. It was found that time sensitivity did not affect spatial components of the timed reaching task, but it was related to temporal components of the task. Ideas regarding the role of time perception in movement planning as well as differences in movement strategies for short and long target intervals are discussed.
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